"Frank Miller could write and draw a third sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, and no matter how good it might be (which would of course be kind of astonishing at this point), no matter how many people read it, and no matter how important some of his prior contributions were to the Batman IP, if the thing isn’t published through DC Comics and stamped with the company logo, then it cannot be canon. It’s fanfiction."
Holy Terror is canon and I will not hear otherwise.
Maybe I'll read Holy Terror at some point. I recently reread The Dark Knight Strikes Again for the first time in like 20 years and was really surprised at how much I didn't hate it. I...I think I might even want to say that it was ahead of its time?! Am I hearing myself saying this???
But yeah, perhaps I'll give Holy Terror a chance. I've still got enough of a hangover leftover from the Bush years that I'm not inclined to give a "Batman fights the jihadis" comic the benefit of the doubt, but maybe it's like The Dark Knights Strikes Again in that it's not really as bad as everyone thought at the time.
Man, makes me miss the old forum wars and trolls of the early zeroes. There was quite the feud between Captain N fan forums. And Captain N isn't even canon to the nintendo games it put in its cartoon and comics.
After reading and rereading that old EFF document (see recent post), I realized how long it's been since I've seen or heard the words "flame war." Strange, right? There was a time when runaway invective and slap fights were unusual enough to have a specifying phrase. I suspect it became a relic after the whole goddamn internet became a continuous flame war.
If those RLM bans are true, presumably because of Shatner's criticism of RLM and the Nerd Crew, that has to be the dumbest feud in geek media to this day. And that's saying a lot considering, well, some of the topics of this article.
I haven't followed this with the dedication I did of Gamergate 1.0 because this does seem like a greatest hits compilation of the old battles a decade ago, and the consequences of victory or defeat seem rather vague anyway. What made Gamergate so interesting was how totalizing it was in the larger culture war, and how it indirectly shaped and predicated the larger political battles from Trump onward. Hell even with your media approved Gamergate critiques that tried to take a comprehensive view on the whole battle, you'll notice that David Auerbach did not last long on Slate after his article was published. In that sense this battle doesn't seem anywhere near as important, no matter what ends up happening with Sweet Baby Inc.
I do think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying that a lot of this fight involves people in their 30s feeling left behind as a different set of politics and norms increasingly defines a lot of the media and culture meant for a younger (teenage to 20-something audience). Such changes are inevitable, and these changes are larger than politics too. That said, I don't think it's as simple to say that the norms that define something like the writing associated with Sweet Baby are desired by younger audiences at the expense of older. Cringe after all is the word of the day and it is routinely levied at these terribly written games. Moreover this particular kind of "subversive", self-aware, and irony poisoned media feels like THE voice of Internet-left millennials that have spent too much time reading Weird Twitter. It is not the voice of people who are younger, whether they are left, right, or apolitical. And, on a personal note, I think media in general - entertainment, news, and otherwise - would be in a much healthier state it wasn't such a monoculture of snarky, Internet-addled, often rich "leftists" whose worldview was shaped entirely through Gawker and Something Awful.
I think the RLM ban (if it exists) is in effect because RLM fans tend to be implacably critical of NuTrek, and the r/startrek jannies don't want them coming in and harshing the vibe.
You're right that the Sweet Baby Inc business is just a blip compared to the howling ado of Gamergate—but blips can also be representative of a larger pattern. See also:
Yeah, these are "anti-woke" outlets telling their audiences what they want to hear. But I do see a multitude of subtle indicators that the Millennial cultural program Gamergate reacted against is losing momentum and exhausting the public's patience. It's just becoming too Cringe. And the first article agrees with you—a lot of the memes, sentiments, and political aesthetic tagged as "Gen Z" is actually (and I quote) "a millennial trend that’s got old and tired."
I don't want to make any predictions along the lines of "anti-woke" becoming as trendy among Gen Z as "woke" became among Millennials who'd had their political education during the ascendency of the Christian Right, the Bush Administration, the Great Recession, and Trump—but I do expect the kids will push back against at least some parts of the program, and probably in a way that leaves everybody kind of confused and disappointed. And that's their prerogative.
I think I misread you a little bit and simplified one of your arguments in my head when replying. I assumed you were arguing that the blowback to Sweet Baby was primarily a reactionary millennial thing (and, by association, that support for that kind of writing was stronger with younger gamers). But reading more closely that's not exactly what you're saying, so I think we have a lot more agreement than I initially thought.
Yeah, it's hard to get a read on where Gen Z is heading, but like you I do suspect there will be a pushback on the most radical of the woke ideas. And I say this because, compared to the late 00s and 10s, I don't see any platforms like Tumblr or Something Awful or Twitter or Reddit shaping or defining new ideas or politics around concepts like trigger warnings or gender identity or "racism equals privilege + power" or power dynamics/consent or even the old atheism battles in ways that can be vaguely coded as liberal or left-wing. It's possible I'm missing something from newer sites like Discord or TikTok - certainly there seems to be enough fear in the US government about TikTok supposedly radicalizing young people against Israel. But I just don't get the sense that there are new fronts in the culture wars anymore - even if there is still plenty of energy in our current political battles - and that to me hints at a change in momentum.
"Frank Miller could write and draw a third sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, and no matter how good it might be (which would of course be kind of astonishing at this point), no matter how many people read it, and no matter how important some of his prior contributions were to the Batman IP, if the thing isn’t published through DC Comics and stamped with the company logo, then it cannot be canon. It’s fanfiction."
Holy Terror is canon and I will not hear otherwise.
Wonderful as usual.
Maybe I'll read Holy Terror at some point. I recently reread The Dark Knight Strikes Again for the first time in like 20 years and was really surprised at how much I didn't hate it. I...I think I might even want to say that it was ahead of its time?! Am I hearing myself saying this???
But yeah, perhaps I'll give Holy Terror a chance. I've still got enough of a hangover leftover from the Bush years that I'm not inclined to give a "Batman fights the jihadis" comic the benefit of the doubt, but maybe it's like The Dark Knights Strikes Again in that it's not really as bad as everyone thought at the time.
Man, makes me miss the old forum wars and trolls of the early zeroes. There was quite the feud between Captain N fan forums. And Captain N isn't even canon to the nintendo games it put in its cartoon and comics.
After reading and rereading that old EFF document (see recent post), I realized how long it's been since I've seen or heard the words "flame war." Strange, right? There was a time when runaway invective and slap fights were unusual enough to have a specifying phrase. I suspect it became a relic after the whole goddamn internet became a continuous flame war.
If those RLM bans are true, presumably because of Shatner's criticism of RLM and the Nerd Crew, that has to be the dumbest feud in geek media to this day. And that's saying a lot considering, well, some of the topics of this article.
I haven't followed this with the dedication I did of Gamergate 1.0 because this does seem like a greatest hits compilation of the old battles a decade ago, and the consequences of victory or defeat seem rather vague anyway. What made Gamergate so interesting was how totalizing it was in the larger culture war, and how it indirectly shaped and predicated the larger political battles from Trump onward. Hell even with your media approved Gamergate critiques that tried to take a comprehensive view on the whole battle, you'll notice that David Auerbach did not last long on Slate after his article was published. In that sense this battle doesn't seem anywhere near as important, no matter what ends up happening with Sweet Baby Inc.
I do think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying that a lot of this fight involves people in their 30s feeling left behind as a different set of politics and norms increasingly defines a lot of the media and culture meant for a younger (teenage to 20-something audience). Such changes are inevitable, and these changes are larger than politics too. That said, I don't think it's as simple to say that the norms that define something like the writing associated with Sweet Baby are desired by younger audiences at the expense of older. Cringe after all is the word of the day and it is routinely levied at these terribly written games. Moreover this particular kind of "subversive", self-aware, and irony poisoned media feels like THE voice of Internet-left millennials that have spent too much time reading Weird Twitter. It is not the voice of people who are younger, whether they are left, right, or apolitical. And, on a personal note, I think media in general - entertainment, news, and otherwise - would be in a much healthier state it wasn't such a monoculture of snarky, Internet-addled, often rich "leftists" whose worldview was shaped entirely through Gawker and Something Awful.
I think the RLM ban (if it exists) is in effect because RLM fans tend to be implacably critical of NuTrek, and the r/startrek jannies don't want them coming in and harshing the vibe.
You're right that the Sweet Baby Inc business is just a blip compared to the howling ado of Gamergate—but blips can also be representative of a larger pattern. See also:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-gen-z-is-turning-against-woke-culture/
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/27/has-gen-z-had-enough-of-woke/
Yeah, these are "anti-woke" outlets telling their audiences what they want to hear. But I do see a multitude of subtle indicators that the Millennial cultural program Gamergate reacted against is losing momentum and exhausting the public's patience. It's just becoming too Cringe. And the first article agrees with you—a lot of the memes, sentiments, and political aesthetic tagged as "Gen Z" is actually (and I quote) "a millennial trend that’s got old and tired."
I don't want to make any predictions along the lines of "anti-woke" becoming as trendy among Gen Z as "woke" became among Millennials who'd had their political education during the ascendency of the Christian Right, the Bush Administration, the Great Recession, and Trump—but I do expect the kids will push back against at least some parts of the program, and probably in a way that leaves everybody kind of confused and disappointed. And that's their prerogative.
I think I misread you a little bit and simplified one of your arguments in my head when replying. I assumed you were arguing that the blowback to Sweet Baby was primarily a reactionary millennial thing (and, by association, that support for that kind of writing was stronger with younger gamers). But reading more closely that's not exactly what you're saying, so I think we have a lot more agreement than I initially thought.
Yeah, it's hard to get a read on where Gen Z is heading, but like you I do suspect there will be a pushback on the most radical of the woke ideas. And I say this because, compared to the late 00s and 10s, I don't see any platforms like Tumblr or Something Awful or Twitter or Reddit shaping or defining new ideas or politics around concepts like trigger warnings or gender identity or "racism equals privilege + power" or power dynamics/consent or even the old atheism battles in ways that can be vaguely coded as liberal or left-wing. It's possible I'm missing something from newer sites like Discord or TikTok - certainly there seems to be enough fear in the US government about TikTok supposedly radicalizing young people against Israel. But I just don't get the sense that there are new fronts in the culture wars anymore - even if there is still plenty of energy in our current political battles - and that to me hints at a change in momentum.