"Here There Be Nerds:" Fan Debates

Similar to Rule 34, in Portland, if it exists, there’s a food cart of it, or there will be.

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Probably true. I just don’t see how someone who likes superhero movies can have not liked Captain Marvel. (Especially since she practically single-handedly saves the universe in the last Avengers movie.) I would be perfectly happy if, moving forward, the Marvel universe consisted entirely of the adventures of Captain Marvel and of Ant Man. Maybe with some scenes at Hulk’s restaurant.

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Unsurprisingly, they were the same reviewers who hated Wonder Woman. Huh, I wonder why?

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Here’s a new fan debate for the ages:

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I watched joker today because curiosity got the better of me, it was quite cheap and i’m weak but i’m struggling to make sense of what i felt about it. I can certainly see why it’s been massively polarising but despite my reservations before having seen it i don’t really think it’s an incel revenge fantasy given certain plot points - namely that the relationship with his neighbour was all in his head. However, it is a very troubling film because i don’t think such a character deserves any sympathy whatsoever and i say that even before he partakes in some ultra violence because we know he becomes the joker and we know all the baggage attached to that character. Yet you can’t help empathising with him and i feel unclean having to admit that! Though there are some stunning scenes (the bathroom), an amazing score - apart from using a particular track from a notorious paedophile which took me right out of the scene, couldn’t they have just kept to the original score? It’s not as smart as it thinks it is but as an origin story for an uber villain it was quite interesting, i just don’t want to be manipulated into empathising with a monster. It might have been someone on here who said that the marvel films appeal to liberals and the dc films appeal to conservatives and joker isn’t going to disprove that.

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This could be fun

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No wearing it backwards?
Pah.

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This was especially odd to me; I had heard about the controversy around that song beforehand, but wasn’t sure how it was used in the film. I felt like it was a terrible fit for that scene and didn’t match the mood or emotion at all.

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I can understand why the (amazing) score would not lend itself to the scene but why the fuck did it have to be that song? But then this is a film by a guy who thinks you can’t make crappy comedies any longer because of woke culture supposedly stifling his awful sense of humour.

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This is a very interesting article… thoughts?

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There’s an episode where the crew docks with an alliance ship for aid (spoiler: drama ensues) and they hand over the ships papers. The alliance officer refers to Mal as Captain Harbatkin, I would say it’s safe to assume the daily log would be rather fictitious (oh we hit a space bird…again!)

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Any trip into a ThinkGeek mall store before it went tits up and it was obvious.

ETA just started reading and will update with some proper thoughts later after it has taken some time to process and ferment in the brain cells.

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The fandom still has the power, https://chinamieville.net/post/4406165249/rejected-pitch

who needs a thinkgeek mall store when you have spencer’s!

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i used to want more star wars. i got more star wars (and jar jar). now i’m sick of star wars, baby yoda, and the fact every major franchise has an entire hot topic’s worth of “merch”. but often it’s not like, good stuff. my kingdom for a realistic lightsaber that’s not so fragile i can’t buy it for a kid cousin

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I agree with you except for this… Sorry. I haven’t even seen Mandolorian, but I do love me some Baby Yoda memes.

mandolorian-baby-yoda-none-my-biz

But yeah, the corporate merching is kind of crazy and ubiquitous at this point. So much of it is cheap crap, but wasn’t it always so? Unless you’re buying the high end collectibles…

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Love the memes he’s cute more just not a huge fan of merch. My childhood stuffed toy was a cheap little no name.

I will concede that maybe we need some wholesome stuff in these dark times.

I like baby yoda much more than jar jar since it’s, you know, not racist

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Like all things it is a mixed bag. I wonder how much of it is some of the geeks actually getting to be in positions to influence the corporate takeover as marketers, directors, execs, etc.

One the one hand I don’t have to specifically go to a con or seedy comic book store now to get a Batman shirt. On the other hand they are common enough now that I am meh about buying and wearing one like I did in the 80s.

Like the revolution of the internet for obscure media we no longer have to hunt down the oddities and curiosities. We can just go to the mall or amazon or youtube and find them right away. The special club of being in the know of where movies are showing and when, what shop will carry or order the anime you just heard about, or what club you need to attend to see the new Doctor before it airs on your local PBS station are gone as the media companies know there is a market out there with $$$$ to spend on this stuff they thought was a minor niche market.

While we still have the same nerd wars of ‘the right kind of fan’ we also have the stars of our shows now pushing back on that. I love Star Trek, but man I have always just rolled my eyes at the nerd debates over the technology. It’s cool if that is your thing but please let those of us who just have a lot of fun watching the show do that as well. Plus I (like our wonderful @Mindysan33) have been much more interested in what these stories say about us and how much they reflect or take jabs at the culture of the time they were created in rather than say how the suit of armor, the tractor beam, etc. would work in real life.

Even the massively hollywood marketed things like the Avengers have some interesting themes about our modern world running through them. They are not deep or necessarily meaningful ones but they are there along with the pulpy two fisted movie matinee fun we have been having since the days of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

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Amazingly, there’s little-to-no Baby Yoda merch at all (yet). The showrunners basically forbid Disney from making any merchandise out of fear of leaking the big reveal of the character. Now that he’s the breakout star, they’re scrambling to make something but so far all there are are some rather crappy t-shirts and some very cute socks.

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